PETA People–Wrong, Even When They’re Right

In an unlikely alliance, the Family Research Council (FRC) and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) have found a common cause: the criminalization of bestiality in the military. Both groups are calling for keeping an explicit ban on sex with animals in the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) that may be eliminated by the Defense Authorization Act.

Kent comments:

While these two groups both don’t want to decriminalize bestiality in the military (or probably anywhere else, for that matter) they get there by such different routes that this “cause” is only marginally “common.”

Presumably, the Family Research Council opposes bestiality because human beings, being made in God’s image, are qualitatively different from animals. (The article does not get into the rationale of this group explicitly, but it is a fair assumption.)

PETA, on the other hand, has a radically different reason for their opposition to bestiality. As the official PETA statement said, they want to “protect all Americans—human and nonhuman alike.”

The PETA people (redundant, but it sounds good) seem to base their rather insane agenda on the idea that animals are persons, and thus “Americans” just like human beings. To give them their due, however little that may be, they never quite say that animals are persons. What they do say is that “supporters of animal rights believe that animals have an inherent worth.” If that is not personhood, it is as close as you can come to it.

What I can’t quite figure out is how the PETA people think they can know that animals don’t want to have sex with humans. From perusing their website, my best guess that they think animals are somehow morally innocent and would never “want” to do something like engaging in sex with humans. Humans, on the other hand – well, we all know how they are about such things.

As one Family Research Council member said about another issue, “PETA folks get this one wrong, too, as they get most things wrong.” They mostly get this one wrong too. They just blindly stumbled into the right conclusion for all the wrong reasons.